MTS2:Creator Guidelines/Sims 2 Poses and Animations

Contents

Poses and Animations Upload Guidelines

When uploading a pose pack or animation to Mod The Sims, we have some basic requirements to ensure that your upload is good, shown well, and has the correct info and files needed for people to use it in their games. This allows both moderators to check your uploads for quality, and for downloaders to see if your item is something they want to add to their games.

Quality

Anatomically Possible: Most poses should look like they could be done by a real person (or animal, for pet poses), within the range of human motion. Of course, poses not meant to be a normal human range (for acrobats or monsters) are fine. Keep in mind that for some poses, while a real body may be able to do it, it may look really bad on a sim. If the body gets badly distorted in a certain pose, try to work around it or try something else.

Gravity: Poses should look balanced and with a believable center of gravity. Your sim/pet shouldn't look like they're about to fall over (unless it's meant to be a pose in motion or falling, of course).

Sinking/Floating: Whether a sim/pet is supposed to be sitting, standing, or leaning, they should not noticeably sink into or float above the surface they're on. Of course, this doesn't apply to poses that are in motion like jumping or falling.

No Stretched Skeleton: The bones should be kept at their regular length, with joints usually only rotated, not moved.

Clipping: Limbs shouldn't float over or collide with other parts of the body. For example, if a hand is supposed to be on the hip, then it shouldn't sink into the pelvis or float a foot above it. Of course, keep in mind the body type intended for sims (poses intended for large sims will look odd on skinny sims, and vice versa), and the type of clothing (for a ski holiday theme, the poses should work well with bulky winter clothing).

Tip: Whenever you're unsure whether a pose looks good and makes sense, use a mirror to check what's possible on your own body, or work from pictures of real people.

Information

Title & Description

Give your upload a descriptive title and write a text description for your upload, describing what you're uploading. Your title and description must be in English or provide an English translation. If you are not a native English speaker, using Google Translate is okay. You can also ask for help writing your description in the Creator Feedback Forum.

Additional Information to include

Make sure your upload text contains at least the following information:

The name, price and category in which your pose box can be found.

Pose Names must be included in full somewhere on the upload post but it's up to you if they are in the main text or just on the images or both. It should be clear which name corresponds to which item in the pie menu so downloaders don't have to try every pose to find the one they want.

Props or Custom Content Links: If your poses use props that someone else made, you must link to them. Please don't make poses that require content you have to pay for.

New Mesh Info: If you have made a new mesh to use as a prop for your pose and have included it in the file, must include the same information you would as if uploading it separately. See MTS Creator Guidelines for TS2 Objects.

Tip: While it's not a site requirement, it is very helpful to downloaders if your pose names are somewhat descriptive of what each pose is actually doing rather than just a generic list of letters or numbers.

Expansions Required

Make sure to select only the expansions needed for the content you're uploading but remember; unless you have unchecked all your EPs and SPs in the SimPE file table before cloning your posebox, it will require the EPs you have installed.

Screenshots

Screenshots

You will need to include certain screenshots with your pose set. You must:

Show the whole thing: You should have at least one picture of each and every pose you are sharing, showing the whole thing without anything cut off or cropped out.

Uncovered: Make sure not to cover the pose with long hair, text added in a photo editor, objects in the way, or your model in clothing like long fluffy skirts that hide a lot of the body.

Include Additional Angles if Necessary: Your images should show at least the key elements of each pose which are the face, hands and limb joints. You may need to show side on views or take a few shots from additional angles if the pose cannot be adequately seen in a single picture.

Props: If you made a new mesh to be used specifically with your pose set and have included it with your poses, you must include the proper pictures of the object as if it were uploaded separately. For details, see: MTS Creator Guidelines for TS2 Objects. You should, of course, show them in use with your poses, too!

Pose Box: Please show the pose box in game or the icon to be used in game.

Please remember, for your required pictures:

In-Game Screenshots: All required screenshots must be taken in the game with actual in-game backgrounds. Please don't cut and paste your models onto non-game backgrounds. Images should be lit well enough to show the poses and not so overly cluttered and fussy that it's difficult to see where the pose ends and the background begins.

Keep the following in mind for your screenshots, especially the required ones:

Size: 600 pixels or more on the smallest side is a good size to aim for. Your images can be up to 2560x1440 pixels, and 800 kb, so you have lots of space to work with!

Lighting: For most things, it's best to take pictures in an interior room with good lighting. For lots, pictures should be taken during a nice sunny day, for floorplans, take the pictures with the lights ON.

Clarity: Neither blurry, nor pixellated/crunchy. Do not size up small pictures to make a large one as this will blur them, and make sure not to use too much compression/too low quality when saving your images.

Distance: Take your pictures so that your creation fills the screen without anything cut off at top or bottom - neither zoomed in too close, nor zoomed out too far.

Distortion: If you resize your images, retain the aspect ratio so they don't get stretched or squashed. Take care when zooming in and out with the camera that you do not create a fisheye effect on your pictures.

Photoshopping: Do not apply filters like sharpen, contrast, etc. to the required pictures, as downloaders want to see what your creation will look like in their game, not your skills at using Photoshop.

Attached: All required images must be attached directly to the MTS upload, not just inserted using the img tag, so that even if the pics get deleted from your Photobucket (or other host), the upload on MTS is still complete.

Show all items: For most areas, if you are uploading a set, you must take all the required pics for each item in the set. If there is an exception, it will be noted.

Picture limit: You may upload up to 100 pictures for a single upload thread, so feel free to add some additional pictures just to show off your work to its best. Of course, keep it reasonable - nobody needs 50 pics to show off one sim or hair.

Inline pictures: Inline pictures are those that use the [img] tag to show up in with the description text. So that it doesn't take too long to load, please keep this to no more than 4 pictures done inline, unless you put them inside an [infobutton] tag. To do this, see our guide on post formatting.

Screenshot tips

Camera Controls:

Take some time to just play around with the camera. It can take a while to get used to the camera controls, and even once you are experienced in their use, it may be challenging to get the shot you want with the constraints on the controls.

If you haven't taken many sim pictures before, here is a list of camera controls:

TAB : Puts the game into Cameraman mode, allowing better and more control of the camera, and removing the blue user interface. Make sure you are in live mode before going into Cameraman mode or you will see grid lines on the ground and floating where floor tiles may be placed. TS3 Note: You will only be able to go into cameraman mode once per load if you are in buy/build mode (without a family moved in). You can either exit to the neighborhood and return to take more pictures, or instead just move a family in for taking your pics.

W and S : W moves the camera forward. S moves it backward.

A and D : A moves the camera left. D moves it right.

Q and E : Q lowers the camera. E raises it.

+ and - : Zooms in and out.

Windowed Mode:

TS2: In order to take your pictures using the methods described here, you will need your game running in a window, so you can easily switch to other applications without causing major instability and lag. Instructions on setting up Windowed Mode for Sims 2 may be found here: Game Help:Windowed Mode. Windowed mode should be perfectly safe - in fact, some users actually report better game performance when running in a window. Your mileage may vary.

TS3: In Sims 3, you can use windowed mode by simply choosing it in your game's options. Full instructions can be found in Game Help:TS3 Windowed Mode. Windowed mode will allow you to use Print Screen or FRAPS or whatever screenshotting program you desire, without getting dark pictures. If you choose to NOT use windowed mode for TS3, you must use the C key to take pictures using the in-game camera - taking pictures fullscreened in TS3 without using the C key will result in icky dark screenshots.

C Key vs. Print Screen:

TS2: In order to take nice big pics, you should not use the game's screenshot system, using the C key or the camera button on the game's controls to take your pictures. Even on the highest picture settings, pictures will still be small, with a very high level of JPEG compression, making them blurry and crunchy. Instead, use Print Screen or a screenshot program.

TS3: The C key camera is much improved in TS3, making it possible to use to take pictures for upload and still have nice big, pretty pictures. You can still use a screenshot program or print screen if you desire, but you will need to run your game in Windowed Mode (see above) to keep your pictures from getting dark.

Using Print Screen: If you have enough RAM to run Photoshop or another graphics editing program at the same time as TS2/TS3, you may want to take screenshots yourself, without the use of a program to store them for you.

To do that, simply press the Print Screen or PrntScn key on your keyboard - it's usually off toward the right, over the arrow keys, above Insert and Delete. This will copy your current screen to your Windows clipboard, as if you had selected and copied it as an image.

Then open any graphics editing program, create a new document the size of your monitor's resolution, and paste into that document. Your screenshot should appear in the document.

Screenshot Programs:

There are many programs available, free and pay, that will take screenshots for you by using a hotkey, and save them to a folder - just like The Sims 2 with the C key, but with options for much better quality settings.

A quick Google search for 'free screenshot program' will also bring up many other options, which may have other features that are of interest to you.

Optimizing, Editing, and Compressing Images:

Many simmers struggle with getting their images to be clear, crisp and under the maximum file size while keeping the image size larger than 800px by 600px. After getting your images from the in game camera or using a print screen program you will need to resize them and compress them into a jpeg image. Many graphics programs have a built in optimizing feature. Here are a few common ones:

Files

Zip, Rar, or 7z

To upload your file(s) to MTS, you will need to compress them into an archive file, which makes them smaller and allows you to include many files in one download. The archive file formats we currently accept are .zip, .rar, and .7z.

Do not include multiple archives with the same contents - that is, please don't put your files in both a .zip as well as a .rar because some people only want .zip files. Choose one format.

Do not double-compress your files... a .rar file inside another .rar file (or any other archive inside another) doesn't compress it anymore, and it makes it so we can't see the contents without downloading, and also just makes an extra step for the people downloading.

The file size limit on MTS is 50 mb. If you exceed this limit you will need to split your archives. This should probably never come up except for large worlds for The Sims 3, or huge sets of smaller items.

Other

Uploads not allowed on MTS

These items are not allowed on MTS in any category.

Pay/Pirated Content

Everything required or recommended for an upload must be freely available, without having to pay.

No uploads requiring pay content: We do not host content (for example, recolours of a pay hair or object mesh) that absolutely require pay content to function in-game.

No optional pay, pirated, or stolen content: Even for optional or recommended content not absolutely required for the creation to work (for example, hair on a sim or a couch on a lot), this means:

No content you must pay for. This means you cannot use items that are pay, donation, subscriber only, "special gift", etc. type content, anything accessible only when you pay money or subscribe.

No content from sites that are repositories of unmodified content when it is still available from the original creator, whether these items are pay or free (no Booty or Simscave, torrents, sites full of stolen content or similar, but the Graveyard and sites that offer recolours or modifications with the mesh are okay).

No EA content simply converted to base game use with no other changes.

No pirated EA Store content. EA Store content, linked to the legitimate EA Store, is okay though. TS2 store content may be included, with proper credit, since the store is no longer available.

Other content not allowed

Items that belong on the adult site: No content posted on MTS can have visible nudity, sexual content, or adult content, and instead must be posted on our adult site, Sexy Sims. This means on MTS, you may not post:

Content that contains nudity, which we define as exposing the female nipples, or the butt crack/genitals of either gender, including semi-transparent stuff like a sheer bra. Items that are merely "sexy" like skimpy miniskirts or string bikinis are fine on MTS. Transsexual/transgender items are also not considered adult content unless they contain nudity.

Sexualized children: We do not allow any sexy/sexualized content for baby, toddler, or child sims in any way - no breasts whatsoever on child sims, no "sexy" outfits, etc. If you want to make preteens, make a less developed body for teen sims. Sexualized child content is not allowed at our adult site either.

EXE installers: Creators are not allowed to post exe (or other executable) files for any area of the site but Modding Tools. If your content needs to be installed to a certain directory, you can compress your files and leave the directory structure intact, so you can tell people to just install to Program Files, for instance, and the files will go where they need to. Executable installers can easily hold viruses, and are generally not needed for installing most content.

Preorder bonus content: Certain items were only available if you preordered certain expansions or stuff packs from certain retailers. It's unfortunate if someone missed out on getting them, but they can't be redistributed here as EA has made it clear that they do not allow it.

Unmodified EP/SP/Store content: While it is common practice to modify and use bits and pieces of game content to create custom content, extracting content from an expansion, stuff pack, or Store item and uploading it unmodified is not allowed on this site. You are welcome to upload significantly modified versions of expansion, stuff pack, or Store content, but you can't just be ripping it and changing one tiny thing (or nothing) just so people who didn't purchase it can still use it.

Converted game content: You can freely modify sims game meshes and textures for use in any sims game, and EA doesn't seem to mind conversions of sims game/store content. However, you may not use meshes and textures from any other game to make Sims content to upload without permission from the original creator - i.e. the company that made the game you're taking pieces from.

Stolen/reuploaded content: This should go without saying, but do not upload content made by others and claim it as your own, in whole or in part. Don't upload the work of someone else without their permission... if they wanted to share it at MTS, they can easily upload it here themselves.

Uncredited content/violating permissions: If any part of what you have uploaded (mesh, textures, alphas, bump maps, coding, etc.) comes from somebody else's work, you MUST provide a link and credit in the text of your post, for the original author. State what you've used of theirs, the author's name, and give a link back to them. You must check the author's policies to see if you can use their content in the way you want, and you may not violate any policies stated. If there are no policies or they don't disallow your type of usage, or the site is permanently offline, then you can assume it's okay. Please see here for more details: Updates and Remixes of Creations.

Redirects: If you want to move a creation to another site, please remove your upload from MTS, don't just edit the text to point to a different site.